Platelet to lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Objectives: It has been well documented that theplatelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and the neutrophil tolymphocyte ratio (NLR) are associated with outcomes forpatients with gastric cancer, non-small cell lung cancerand acute heart failure. Inflammation may be the hiddenfactor that explains the correlation between NLP, PLR, andthese diseases. However, to date, the data concerning NLR,PLR, and its association with inflammation are lackingin patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), thus, our aimto discuss whether NLR and PLR are associated with RA.Methods: Patients with RA and healthy individualswere included according to the determined criteria,and laboratory indicators were measured.Results: PLR and NLR were significantly higher in RApatients compared with healthy controls (3.20±2.06vs. 1.56±0.47, P<0.01; 192.85±101.78 vs. 103.49±28.68,P<0.01). When leukocytes, neutrophil percentage, neutrophil,lymphocyte, platelet, C-reactive protein (CRP),erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and rheumatoidfactor (RF) were considered as confounders (crudemodel), our results indicated that ESR and RF were correlatedto RA. Of note, ESR, RF, and PLR were associatedwith RA after further adjustment based on crude modelfor PLR and NLR. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC)curves analysis showed that PLR values higher than >115.7 evaluated RA with a sensitivity of 82.5%, a specificityof 74.8% and area under the curve ( AUC ) of 0.847.Conclusions:Our results suggest that PLR is associatedwith RA, and PLR may be an underlying indicator indicatingthe chronic subclinical inflammation in patientswith RA.